Publish : 11 Jan 2022, 12:35 AMUpdate : 10 Jan 2022, 11:37 PM
“Tell me your mobile bill please.” The master of the house brandishes her handy impatiently, waiting for the numbers to be relayed back. The authoritative voice resounds, and the remaining inhabitants of the home scurry to do her bidding.
“What about the electricity bill? When was it due?” An uncomfortable silence greets the probing questions. The amount is presumably long overdue, and we may be living in the clear and imminent danger of the mealy-mouthed linesman who, curse him, will plunge our house into darkness with a smile.
Dear reader, these tense and often unpleasant moments are for millions of households, now happily a receding memory. For we now conduct at least a part of our lives through the portals of the ubiquitous payment gateway which, fired by today’s information technology, provides advance notice of what is to be paid to whom.
The gateway includes the card-reading devices that are now part of the physical retail stores where many of us still prefer to shop, as well as the payment processing platforms found in online stores. It is a key component of the electronic payment processing system that sends customer information to the identified bank, where the proposed transaction is then processed.
Once the payment gateway collects and encrypts the customer card information for subsequent processing, the transaction is completed by the payment processor, a service that connects the customer’s bank to the merchant account and facilitates the actual movement of money by debiting one account and crediting another.
And what better example of the convergence of technology with convenience than the monolithic Unified Payment Interface, the spectacular success story of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an initiative of the Government of India, and popularly known by its initials of UPI? A smartphone-enabled application launched in 2016, the UPI facilitates a payment in real time by transferring money between two bank accounts through the medium of a mobile platform.
Regulated by the Reserve Bank of India, it transfers money instantly and, significantly, eliminates the need to transact with physical cash or through a bank. The application eliminates the need to enter bank details or other sensitive information each time a transaction is initiated because today each account, debit card, and credit card in existence is integrated with the banks and merchants providing financial services. This constitutes a herculean feat of co-ordination, logistics, and marketing.
How do we measure the success of UPI? The numbers speak for themselves. The value of transactions through UPI was a monstrous 7.71 trillion rupees in October 2021, and daily UPI payments for the month of October was estimated at 250 billion to 300 billion rupees. With over 700 million consumers making purchases across the borders, the NPCI is leaving no stone unturned in its efforts to facilitate instant payments in countries, from Singapore to Russia.
We are in the thrall, and indeed in the happy throes of, the “economy of convenience.” Information technology has raced ahead to create options on a gargantuan scale. Accessibility to the smartphone has catalyzed the use of payment gateways and, significantly, with millions of people being added on-line every year, it is the growing culture of trust that steers people in droves to the on-line platforms.
In spite of the seeming chaos and inertia, we are an integrated economic unit. If the overarching objective of the government of developing countries like India and Bangladesh is to create a cashless economy bolstered by a nation of accountable citizens, then what better way to aid this process than with the ease of doing business at the level of the family unit. Because, dear reader, this is the magic of the convenience that we enjoy today.
Sumit Basu is a freelance contributor based in India.
The convenient economy
Technology continues to make lives easier for citizens across the board
“Tell me your mobile bill please.” The master of the house brandishes her handy impatiently, waiting for the numbers to be relayed back. The authoritative voice resounds, and the remaining inhabitants of the home scurry to do her bidding.
“What about the electricity bill? When was it due?” An uncomfortable silence greets the probing questions. The amount is presumably long overdue, and we may be living in the clear and imminent danger of the mealy-mouthed linesman who, curse him, will plunge our house into darkness with a smile.
Dear reader, these tense and often unpleasant moments are for millions of households, now happily a receding memory. For we now conduct at least a part of our lives through the portals of the ubiquitous payment gateway which, fired by today’s information technology, provides advance notice of what is to be paid to whom.
The gateway includes the card-reading devices that are now part of the physical retail stores where many of us still prefer to shop, as well as the payment processing platforms found in online stores. It is a key component of the electronic payment processing system that sends customer information to the identified bank, where the proposed transaction is then processed.
Once the payment gateway collects and encrypts the customer card information for subsequent processing, the transaction is completed by the payment processor, a service that connects the customer’s bank to the merchant account and facilitates the actual movement of money by debiting one account and crediting another.
And what better example of the convergence of technology with convenience than the monolithic Unified Payment Interface, the spectacular success story of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an initiative of the Government of India, and popularly known by its initials of UPI? A smartphone-enabled application launched in 2016, the UPI facilitates a payment in real time by transferring money between two bank accounts through the medium of a mobile platform.
Regulated by the Reserve Bank of India, it transfers money instantly and, significantly, eliminates the need to transact with physical cash or through a bank. The application eliminates the need to enter bank details or other sensitive information each time a transaction is initiated because today each account, debit card, and credit card in existence is integrated with the banks and merchants providing financial services. This constitutes a herculean feat of co-ordination, logistics, and marketing.
How do we measure the success of UPI? The numbers speak for themselves. The value of transactions through UPI was a monstrous 7.71 trillion rupees in October 2021, and daily UPI payments for the month of October was estimated at 250 billion to 300 billion rupees. With over 700 million consumers making purchases across the borders, the NPCI is leaving no stone unturned in its efforts to facilitate instant payments in countries, from Singapore to Russia.
We are in the thrall, and indeed in the happy throes of, the “economy of convenience.” Information technology has raced ahead to create options on a gargantuan scale. Accessibility to the smartphone has catalyzed the use of payment gateways and, significantly, with millions of people being added on-line every year, it is the growing culture of trust that steers people in droves to the on-line platforms.
In spite of the seeming chaos and inertia, we are an integrated economic unit. If the overarching objective of the government of developing countries like India and Bangladesh is to create a cashless economy bolstered by a nation of accountable citizens, then what better way to aid this process than with the ease of doing business at the level of the family unit. Because, dear reader, this is the magic of the convenience that we enjoy today.
Sumit Basu is a freelance contributor based in India.
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